


The Shrine / An Argument

by chalcedonyx



Series: Take Me Back [to the Night We Met] [1]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Heavy Angst, Nonbinary Apprentice (The Arcana), Original Character(s), Other, Songfic, Whump, no beta. only post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23557873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chalcedonyx/pseuds/chalcedonyx
Summary: He imagines them walking down to the white sands of some Vesuvian beach, not even pausing to disrobe before they step straight into the sea, the waves lapping at their heels, their thighs, their stomach, before they dunk their head under the water and scream their unspoken suffering into the void of the ocean, washing off his name from their throat.
Relationships: Apprentice/Asra (The Arcana), Asra (The Arcana)/Original Character(s)
Series: Take Me Back [to the Night We Met] [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695565
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18





	The Shrine / An Argument

**Author's Note:**

> a songfic in 2020? [it's more likely than you think.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTIZ0BCry_k)

Just after dawn, he visits the old stone fountain in the middle of the little mountain town. Dust and pollen float through the atmosphere, catching in the cracks of the worn stone pavement, landing in the long forgotten water of the fountain. 

Once a popular feature of the little township nestled in the heart of the mountains, it sat now abandoned. He dips his fingers into the water, skims them just below the surface, sending ripples out from the contact. 

Coins glimmer and gleam in the sunrise, their reflections shining and creating a hundred thousand speckles of light through the water.

What had become of the children who had once played here, who had once wished for better things with their small offerings of copper?

Faust slithers up from his scarf, flicking her tongue out. She is content in the warm sun, a kind relief after a harsh winter. 

It's late spring. 

It's late spring and he remembers the way Zela's nose would wrinkle up, their face scrunched up so cutely before a sneeze, during allergy season.

He tries to push the thought out of his mind, the sun now beaming down on him as if to cast judgment on him. He would never escape it. No matter what he did.

He glances up, up at the apple trees that surround the little plaza, the sunlight dappling brightly through their leaves, and he's unable to tear his eyes away from the shining light green skin of the fruits that hang delicately above him. They sway gently in the breeze and he spies one on the ground by the trunk of one tree. A stray, fallen from the branch. Against his better judgment, he scoops it up, holding it cautiously in his palm. 

He wonders if it's as sweet as the ones the two of them would buy together in the market. The shiny green orbs pulled out of a charmed crate, cold and refreshing, the only respite from the sweltering heat of the summer afternoons. The satisfying  _ crunch _ of their first bite into the things, the juice gathering on their bottom lip and dripping off their chin. The way they smiled when he kissed delicately the skin there, cleaning up the mess with his own mouth. 

The way  _ they _ tasted sweet, sweeter than all the honey and apples in all of Vesuvia, on his tongue.

Were they wandering the aisles of the market without him? Buying apples without him? Would there even be any merchants alive to bring in the imported fruits? 

He yells in desperation as he suddenly tosses the fruit as hard as he can, startling both Faust and himself. It bursts on contact with a sun-bleached brick wall, and his breathing is shallow. He pants, trying to calm himself.

How many days had it been, since he'd left? Since they'd decided to stay behind? What were they doing, at this very moment? Did they ever think of him? What became of them, after he'd gone?

Faust peers up at him from his sleeve, concern deep in her eyes.

_ Friend?  _

He's unable to speak, so he just settles on a nod. He breathes a heavy, shuddering sigh, and reaches into his satchel for a pouch of coins.

He gathers a handful of them and after much debate, hesitantly sets them on the lip of the fountain. 

He wasn't one to beg for mercy from whatever beings in the sky weren't listening to him in the first place.

He wasn't one to wish on coins or through prayers to gods in their shrines. 

But they were. It was just another kind of magic, they'd said, grinning up at him as they held the copper piece in their hands. Closing their eyes and focusing on some little hope before flipping the coin into the palace fountain with their thumb.

So he leaves an offering, slides the coins off the lip of the fountain with one smooth swipe of his palm, and they drop into the water, floating to the bottom.

He thinks of them only, all that copper glowing fine.

He never stops dreaming of them, never stops seeing things that remind him of them. Never stops re-living their last conversation - an  _ argument  _ \- imagining all the ways it could've gone differently. 

Each and every day now he awakes to that same terrible, inescapable sunlight, remembering in flashes their last moments together.

When they'd spoken, they wouldn't even look in his eyes. 

And he'd just. Left them there. He'd left them standing there in the doorway, a resigned and crushing acceptance written on their countenance.

He imagines them re-reading the letters he'd written, imagines them sitting on the stoop of the shop, pulling their coat more closely around their shoulders because he isn't there to warm them.

He imagines them walking down to the white sands of some Vesuvian beach, not even pausing to disrobe before they step straight into the sea, the waves lapping at their heels, their thighs, their stomach, before they dunk their head under the water and scream their unspoken suffering into the void of the ocean, washing off his name from their throat. 

If they had just  _ listened. _ If he had just tried harder to convince them.

But for all of his staircase wit, it doesn't and won't ever change a thing.

Until the day a magpie lands on his window sill, croning out a cacophonous song as it bounces around in agitation. His gaze shoots up to the bird and he stares at it in stunned silence before it spots him and flutters over to him. He ducks out of the way at first and it lands on the top rung of his standing coat rack, cawing at him loudly.

And then he realizes it's not just any old corvid - he knows these clandestine, iridescent blue-green feathers - it's  _ theirs _ \- and his breath catches in his throat. 

How had their familiar found him? So far and away and after so much time?

Faust slithers up his form hurriedly, coiling herself around his forearm, her little voice echoing loudly in his mind.

_ Friend! Friend!! Help!! _

Something is very, very wrong.

When he finally makes it back into the city limits of Vesuvia, that terrible sunlight shines down on him. But in the dark haze that now looms over the city, the sun looks half its size.

He barrels through the streets, his scarf pulled up over his face so as to avoid contact with the sick. Past ransacked and looted homes, the front doors adorned with strips of red cloth to signal the presence of plague. Until he reaches the door he is looking for, decorated with its own strip of red cloth, tattered and brilliant crimson.

The shop is empty, save for cobwebs and a single envelope lying on the counter, with his name on the back in their swift and curling script. 

_ Asra, _

_ If you're reading this, then I hope it means you've come back to a healthy Vesuvia. _

_ But it also means that I will not be here to see you return. They're taking me in the morning to the Lazaret. There's nothing more they can do for me. _

Deep, searing terror twists inside his chest.

_ You were right. As usual. But I will not apologize for doing what I thought was right. And though I have struggled with your leaving, I have come to terms with it, just as I've come to terms with my fate.  _

The next lines are interrupted by a spattered stain of dark red.

_ I forgive you.  _ _ And I hope _ _ And I hope that you found whatever it was you were looking for out there. _

_ Even in the face of this, I never stopped loving you, and I hope, somehow, we might see each other again someday. The shop is yours. Do with it what you will. _

_ Please take care of Maca for me. _

_ Zela  _

Surely whatever gods he'd prayed to when he'd left those coins in the fountain were laughing at him now. He remembers the little tattoo of the spiral staircase, on their ribcage, just below their left breast.

_ Staircase wit _ , they had said, and it’s what he feels: they’d both found the words when it was too late to let them slip.

His blood goes cold and his heart drops into his stomach when he sees the bird, their familiar, flying towards the dark spot of land on the horizon.

_ No. No, no, no. _

He digs through the sand, blackened by ash, for them, digs until his fingers crack and scrape open on the sharp edges of their remains, and his hands are bloody. Bloody and quivering as he holds their skull in his palm, looks into the hollow eye sockets and remembers the beautiful eyes that once sat there.

His tears fall freely into the dark earth beneath him and he hears echoes in his mind of the final words of their last conversation, cacophonous and louder than two terrible trumpets.

_ “You’re a coward.” _

They were right. He was a coward, and they had been punished for it.

He remembers the tears that had slipped down their cheeks before he'd turned on his heel and walked away from them for the very last time.

Remembers the green apples hanging from the slowly growing tree in their greenroom, the one they’d planted together with the seeds from the sweet little fruits in the market. 

They belonged only to him now. 

He will not ever remember how much time passes while he sits there on the ruined shore of the Lazaret, staring at the sea. 

Eventually someone finds him and whisks him away,  _ you’re not supposed to be here _ , they say, and he finds himself on the white sands of the opposite shore, staring blankly at the dark blemish on the horizon.

He tosses a coin into the ocean, wishing for the waves to climb up and up the sand until they consume him and carry him away, like pollen on the breeze.

  
  



End file.
